What Is the Future of the History PhD?

Ann Hall is director of communications at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Robert Darnton, Caroline Winterer, Robert Townsend

Photo credit: Laura Christoffels

For
generations, the training of history PhD candidates has remained
relatively static. Graduate students are expected to research and
publish book-length dissertations with the ultimate goal of obtaining
a tenure-track position at a four-year college or university. But in
practice, PhDs are increasingly seeking alternative, non-academic
careers, while advances in technology and the development of new
media have provided rich opportunities for them to share their work
and engage with academics and the public. Change isn’t just coming,
it’s already here. Which raises an interesting question: What is
the future of the history PhD?

As
David Armitage,
the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard, introduced
the panel, he commented on the importance of fostering thoughtful and
productive dialogue. “There is an ongoing conversation within the
historical profession about how it is mutating,” he said. “We now
need to reconsider and reimagine training in the 21st century and
look to the future of the PhD carefully.”

Robert
Townsend observed that while scholars have debated advancements in
history education for decades, their concepts never gained traction.
Even today, the discipline seems resistant to change, rejecting
innovative ideas, such as online publishing, for their lack of
prestige. As part of a 2010 survey, Townsend asked history faculty to
rate their engagement with digital tools and found that only four
percent fully embraced new technologies as digital humanists. Though
novel and immediate methods of sharing content now exist, historians
are reluctant to adopt them, often for personal reasons. “When
asked why they wouldn’t review an e-book, for example, many
respondents cited the tactile nature of print materials,” he
explained. “They wanted the physicality of the book, the ability to
annotate and keep it.”

Townsend
also presented the results of a study he coauthored for the American
History Association that followed a cohort over ten years to
determine their employment status. He discovered that 53 percent of
graduates obtained tenure-track appointments while 25 percent sought
non-academic jobs. While these statistics demonstrate how versatile a
history education can be, they also highlight the potential for a
quarter of graduate students to be underserved by a profession that
traditionally readies them for academic employment.

This
is a situation that Stanford takes very seriously. Caroline Winterer
discussed how that institution is bringing alternative careers for
history PhDs to a whole new level. “I believe the day of the
monastic PhD program, where we think solely about moving on to a
four-year college or university, is waning if not already over,”
she said. “We need to start looking beyond that to envision careers
in museums, publishing, and the private sector, for example.” Until
now, she continued, training has consisted of preparing doctoral
candidates to think only of a “public of four,” their
dissertation review committee. Winterer believes that these scholars
should consider other “publics” as audiences for their ideas.
“Every student from the first day of graduate school should think
about why they are so excited about their research and consider whom
they want to communicate that excitement to.”

Winterer
also believes that faculty advisors need to speak openly and
reassuringly with students about seeking non-traditional positions,
and that institutions can support this effort by offering alternative
career assistance. For example, Stanford has launched the H-STEP
Fellowship (Humanities in the Stanford Teacher Education
Program), which prepares PhD graduates in humanities and arts for
careers in secondary school teaching. Another collaboration provides
journalism instruction for those wishing to write for a broad
audience. “Those who participate develop the ability to speak
eloquently and clearly about the humanities,” Winterer said. “We
need this kind of writing to make the case for why the humanities
matter.”

Robert
Darnton believes that instruction should adapt, as should the ways in
which students engage with their “publics.” He began by noting
that we inhabit an academic world created in the 19th century that
worked adequately in the 20th and has clearly become dysfunctional in
the 21st. “Our means of expression are ancient,” he said. “Our
two main media—the book and the lecture—date to the Middle Ages,
and the scholarly article from the early 19th century.”

This
culture of expression is transforming under the pressure of
technology and economics, however. “On the web, there is no clear
distinction between book and article, and it no longer makes sense to
limit thinking to these ancient modes,” Darnton said. He also
commented that the profession should consider cutting the average
time to degree from eight years to four, with a series of articles
replacing the traditional book-length dissertation. “Let’s end
the overspecialized, trivial PhD,” he said. “Let’s develop
thought and new modes of communication that will create new modes of
knowledge and scholarship.”

As
a strong proponent of open access, Darnton sees tremendous
opportunity for students to share their work globally and
ecumenically, especially through the Harvard portal DASH
(Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard). “The 17,000 articles in
DASH that are available free to anyone in the world have been
downloaded 3 million times,” he said. “Open access is creating a
new space of freedom for writers and for the public, and this is an
excellent way for historians to reach more readers.”

While
the panelists made it clear that the profession is changing because
of the introduction of new technology and due to individual decisions
not to pursue academic careers, they recognize that this shift
underscores the importance of the degree. “History PhDs should be
cultural mediators,” Darnton said. “There is such a need to teach
people about the world and the past.”